Gun advocates race to beat the clock

MariAn Gail Brown and Libor Jany

Updated 12:02 am, Friday, April 5, 2013

Andrew Pabis of North Atlantic Sportsman, Inc. a sporting goods ship that sells sporting guns for skeet shooting and pistols, in Monroe displays a Browning BT99 single-shot shotgun. Under the new law, a 20-year-old soldier returning from Afghanistan with experience handling sophisticated firearms, can no longer lawfully own this sports gun. It's illegal for anyone under 21 to own this target gun.
Photo: MariAn Gail Brown

Just about 90 minutes before Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed Connecticut's sweeping gun control bill into law Thursday, Tim Es cruised into K-5 Arms Exchange's parking lot in Milford expecting to find a space.

Fat chance. Every spot was taken.

"I did three turns through the lot looking for any parking spot at all," Es said. "Finally, I headed over to an adjoining building. When I got inside, it was wall-to-wall customers."

The place was buzzing.

Some gun owners were stocking up on ammunition. Others were looking to buy more firearms. And all of them were asking what the new law means.

For example, were they in violation of the new law if the magazines in their semi-automatic pistols or their civilian-style assault rifles had 12 rounds of ammo instead of 10?

At more than a dozen gun shops surveyed by Hearst Connecticut Newspapers on Thursday, gun shop owners expressed confusion, dismay and frustration as they tried to answer a barrage of questions about how the new law will change the gun rights landscape in the Constitution state, where Samuel Colt and Sturm, Ruger & Co. made guns big business.

"The bill is 138-pages long. It's technical and I can go into K-5 and get one opinion and another entirely difference one at the Connecticut Gun Exchange in Monroe," Es said. "There are responsible gun owners and irresponsible ones.

"Nancy Lanza, the mom of the Sandy Hook school shooter, was an irresponsible one. She allowed someone she ought to have known posed a danger with access to an arsenal. And now, every responsible gun owner is paying."

Joe Cimino is the owner of North Atlantic Sportsman, Inc., a bustling sporting goods store in Monroe that sells rifles for target shooting and an assortment of pistols and revolvers.

Cimino said uncertainty about whether the new law allows him to sell Glock semi-automatics with 12-cartridge magazines means he'll remove those guns from his display cases.

"I have some firearms right now that I don't know if I can sell, so I'm not going to," Cimino said. "On top of that, I can't get the entire bill off the Internet.

"I've been trying since 9 o'clock this morning, and here we are (seven) hours later and still nothing. And when I call the state and ask a question, even they can't give me answers."

Among the lesser publicized aspects of the new law is that it makes it illegal, for the first time, for an adult younger than 21 to possess a long gun.

Cimino held out a Browning BT 99 single-shot rifle. It's "commonly used for skeet or target shooting," he said.

"So, what this (law) means is that your 20-year-old son or daughter who returns from serving in the military in Afghanistan can have all this sophisticated experience with high-capacity weaponry like an M-60," Cimino said, "and I can't sell him one of these for skeet shooting. How's that? You defend your country. You return and you are denied the right to own a skeet shooting gun."

The new law states that gun owners must register all high-capacity magazines that were purchased before Malloy signed Thursday's bill. Exactly how law enforcement might determine whether gun owners comply with this aspect of the new law is unclear.

"Will they have random inspections?" Andrew Pabis, a salesman at North Atlantic Sportsman, asked. "What if cops don't check everybody? That might give rise to claims of selective enforcement or profiling. To my mind, that's the state setting itself up for lawsuits."